Information for Employers - Fact Sheet

Accommodations, such as a handrail or reducing background noise, allow a person with a brain injury to manage their work environment better. When considering accommodations for someone with a brain injury, it is important to remember that this process must be conducted on a case by case basis with input from the individual. Brain injury may result in a combination of disabilities. The limitations resulting from each of these disabilities may need to be effectively accommodated.

People who have brain injuries may develop some of the following limitations.

You can install ramps, handrails, and provide disabled parking spaces.Install lever style door handles and clear pathways of travel of any unnecessary equipment and furniture.

Provide written information in large print. Change fluorescent lights to high intensity, white lights. Increase natural lighting and provide a glare guard for computer monitors.Consult a vision specialist particularly with someone who has lost part of or all of their vision.

Flexible scheduling and allowing longer or more frequent work breaks is a great help. Provide additional time and a self-paced workload to learn new responsibilities. Provide backup coverage for when the employee needs to take breaks and allow time off for counselling. Make room for the use of supportive employment and job coaches if required. Allow employee to work from home during part of the day and provide for job sharing opportunities.

Reduce distractions in the work area by providing space enclosures or a private officeand allowing for use of white noise or environmental sound machines.Let the employee play soothing music using a headset. Increase natural lighting and reduce clutter in the employee’s work environment.
Plan for uninterrupted work time and divide large assignments into smaller tasks and steps. Try restructuring the job to include only essential functions.

Make daily To Do lists and check items off as they are completed. Use several calendars to mark meetings and deadlines and remind the employee of important deadlines via memos, email or weekly supervision. Use a watch or pager with timer capability or an electronic organiser. Divide large assignments into smaller tasks and stepsand assign a mentor to assist the employee in determining goals and providing daily guidance.Schedule weekly meetings with the supervisor, manager or mentor to determine if goals are being met.

Allow the employee to tape record meetings or provide type written minutes of each meeting.Use notebooks, calendars, or sticky notes to record information for easy retrievaland provide written as well as verbal instructions. Allow additional training time and provide environmental cues to assist in memory for locations of items, such as labels, colour coding, or bulletin boards. Post instructions over all frequently used equipment.

Provide picture diagrams of problem solving techniques such as flow charts.Restructure the job to include only essential functions and assign a supervisor, manager or mentor to be available when the employee has questions.

Provide positive praise and reinforcement. Written job instructions and clear expectations of responsibilities and the consequences of not meeting them are very helpful. Allow for open communication to supervisors and establish written long term and short term goals. Develop strategies to deal with problems before they arise and develop a procedure to evaluate the strategies’ effectiveness.

Provide praise and positive reinforcement and refer to counselling and employee assistance programmes if required. Allow telephone calls during work hours to doctors and others for needed support. Provide sensitivity training to co-workers and allow the employee to take a break to use stress management techniques to deal with frustration.

Provide flexible leave for health problems. Provide a self-paced work load and flexible hours. Allow employee to work from home or provide part-time work schedule.

Recognise that a change in the office environment may be difficult for a person with a brain injury. Keep open channels of communication between the employee and the new and old supervisor in order to ensure an effective transition. Provide weekly or monthly meetings with the employee to discuss workplace issues.

A police officer, returning to work following surgery for a brain aneurysm, had partial paralysis to the left side and could no longer use both hands for word processing. Transferring to a vacant position that involved computer research accommodated him and he was provided a one handed keyboard.

A professional whose work required the use of a computer returned to work following a brain injury. As a result of his injury he was unable to read past the midline when reading from left to right. Accommodation suggestions included: changing the margin settings of his word processing programme for 80 to 40 to limit right side reading, or to purchase software that could split the computer screen left to right and black out the right side; redesign his workstation to place equipment on the left; and provide task lighting.

A therapist who had short-term memory deficits had difficulty writing case notes from counselling sessions. Accommodation suggestions included: allowing the therapist to tape record sessions and replay them before dictating notes, to schedule 15 minutes at the end of each session to write up hand written notes and to schedule fewer counselling session per day.

A labourer working in a noisy factory had difficulty concentrating on job tasks. Accommodation suggestions included: erecting sound absorbing barriers around his work station, moving unnecessary equipment from the area to reduce traffic and allowing the employee to wear a headset or ear plugs.

Many thanks to the Job Accommodation Network for their kind permission to adapt an article from their website. The original article written by Kendra M. Duckworth can be viewed at http://www.jan.wvu.edu/media/BrainInjury.html.